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If you love mustard and suffer from culinary envy, then you might have a spicy reaction of moutarde jealousy next time you’re lathering a classic Dijon mustard over a juicy steak. You’ll be green to know that the locals of Dijon in France don’t just get to relish in the condiment that hails from their region. They get easy access, regularly taste and use an additional 32 mustard varieties in their cooking.
Situated right in the heart of Dijon’s old town is the shop belonging to the 178-year-old Edmond Fallot mustard brand, which sells a total of Lining the walls inside the half-timbered French-style house that is La Moutarderie Edmond Fallot are hundreds of little glass jars with gold lids. It’s in this quirky mustard heaven that visitors are invited to taste all the moutarde they can muster at the ‘degustation’ station towards the back of the shop.
Florine Humbert – a sales assistant at La Moutarderie Edmond Fallot – lists the flavours, some with and without grains, in the bottles neatly lined up around the room. There’s mustard with fig, truffle, green peppercorn, horseradish, saffron, salmon, yuzu, Espelette pepper (a French capsicum) and curry.
Then you’ve got your alcohol-based varieties: mustard with pinot noir, Chablis wine (as well as a plain white wine flavour), and Crémant de Bourgogne – a less bubbly form of sparkling wine from the Burgundy region.
“Here, we also have mustard with basil and a tarragon mustard, which is delicious with white fish and white meat,” says Humbert, who’s now standing behind the degustation station, serving generous offerings of the condiment.
Sales assistant Florine Humbert at the degustation station, where all 33 flavours of mustard are available for tasting. Source: Mark Freeman
“You can have this gingerbread mustard (mustard with pain d'épices) with white meat like duck or have it on bread with goat’s cheese. We also have moutarde à la provençale, which has white pepper, garlic and paprika in it. It’s good to eat with barbecued white fish.
“But honey and balsamic is my favourite mustard. It is sweet because of the honey but strong because of the vinegar.” I taste a sample on a wooden spoon. Enticed at first, I’m soon rendered speechless as I wait for the mustard’s heat to exit my throat.
“It’s excellent with everything,” she says, witnessing my obvious physical reaction that ended in culinary delight. “My other favourite is walnut mustard, which goes well tossed through a chicory salad.” Fallot also pairs walnut mustard with fish and asparagus. “These are my top two flavours.”
The brand is everywhere throughout the region – in fresh produce shops, markets and gift stores – as well as in gourmet shops and Galleries Lafayette throughout France. Internationally, the mustards are available online.
If you’ve got sensitive eyes, wear your sunglasses in the factory: the sting of mustard is prevalent throughout the building, adding an extra zing of character to the tour.
The best flavour I sampled at the Fallot shop and saw used in dishes throughout Burgundy was blackcurrant (cassis) mustard, which Humbert rates as medium-strong.
using the cassis mustard with beef fillet and carrots, as well as other red meats. But interestingly, Chef Vincent Chirat, who works at pairs cassis mustard with a white meat dish, his rabbit terrine.
Chirat tells SBS although it’s important to stick to French culinary traditions and always serve mustard with rabbit terrine, the cassis mustard variation allows for creativity in the kitchen.
“I like classical recipes but not in so traditional ways,” he says. “I wanted to use a mustard that was not too strong, which had a sour and soft taste that added something nice to the rabbit dish. There are a lot of mustard flavours to choose from but this is the one we prefer with the terrine – cassis mustard. It is different.”
What about traditional Dijon mustard?
Of course, Fallot also produces straight-up Dijon mustard. It’s traditionally made combining verjuice, extracted from Burgundy Meursault grapes, with mustard seeds ground using a traditional stone mill to preserve the flavour and texture of the ingredients.
If you’re really keen on learning about the , you can go on guided tour of the last independent mustard factory in France, the Fallot mustard mill in Beaune, owned by Edmond Fallot’s grandson, Marc Désarménien, and located about 30 minutes drive from the shop in Dijon.
The mill is also the first French museum dedicated to mustard and it beams with quirkiness – the experience tells the story of production from the point of view of mustard seeds so you can better identify with moutarde. If you’ve got sensitive eyes, wear your sunglasses in the factory: the sting of mustard is prevalent throughout the building, adding an extra zing of character to the tour.
Although Fallot’s classic Dijon mustard recipe, dating back to 1840, has been time-tested, Humbert explains that it is not protected by an appellation. So technically, anyone can make Dijon mustard using verjuice and mustard seeds.
Most of the mustard seeds used in the local production of Fallot mustard these days are imported from Canada, because of the progressive disappearance of production in Burgundy after the second World War .
The good news is that mustard cultivation is slowly returning to the region. One big step towards this happened in 2009, when Fallot successfully gained a protected designation of origin indication for its .
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Humbert explains that the appellation mustard, which you can taste at the shop or factory, “has to be made, 100 per cent, of mustard seeds grown in Burgundy and Bourgogne Aligoté (a white wine variety from Burgundy)”. The mustard is also produced in Beaune.
“Bourgogne mustard is less strong than Dijon mustard. For me, it’s just the best of all Fallot mustards.”
